Should Gorges have the ability to drop a hive and harvester?
Mango
Join Date: 2012-10-11 Member: 162061Members
I remember back in the days of ns1 when aliens was down to 1 skulk left and everyone else was dead. It's been awhile but I believed he turned to a gorge and was able to place a hive at any area of the map. What was great was that last gorge pretty much saved the aliens from being extinct and once that hive was up everyone else re-spawned. We came back fighting hard but ended up losing that game. The point it was actually fun even though we still lost we still had a great time. Is NS-2 ever going to allow this to happen or is it just a comm only thing now? And, should gorges have the ability like they did in NS-1 to drop harvesters and hives to help the alien comm to focus on other things? In NS-1 it was actually kinda fun to have the last skulk to be able to build a hive and give it one last college try in turning the game around. If this is not possible can we at least have a MOD that allows this maybe it can be like NS-1 all over again with no limitation on where the hive can be dropped. This a alien post, pls keep the "what about marines?" post to a minimum.
Comments
The marines kill the last hive, but the game does not end. The aliens get no res, while the marines still stockpile them at an astronomic rate. The first thing marine comm would do would be to send players to all techpoints, maybe would build turrets on each techpoint, together with obs, etc. Even when low on res, even sending a single MAC to each tech point would suffice, because the alien would have to kill it first, giving away its position.
What would follow? The surviving alien(s) would realize they have no chance to drop the base with all the turrets in place and marines and exos patrolling, and would stay hidden in vents forever. The marines would then have to comb every vent and dark cranny to find and kill those survivors. Sounds like a total waste of time to me, expecially for all those dead alien players.
I understand that NS1 maps were much larger, with more possibilities to hide, sneak, etc. But now, with jetpacks and phase gates, marines can respond within seconds, so the chance of placing, let alone maturing a new hive in said condition is pretty negligible.
But allowing to build a hive would mean afterwards (I feel) to allow simple buildings (i.e. cloak tower); and I don't see it as being dangerous for NS2 gameplay, as it would need a great waste of personal res. On the opposite I feel it could multiply the possibilities of a game, while being far from disastrous.
edit : and I don't see building a hive right when the last hive is killed a problem; the kham can already do this; plus map are small (according to the guy above); so less time to waste....
About dropping hive's and harvesters, i liked this in ns1 but there was no alien commander then. Doing it now will save pres into tres and i'm not sure if that's a good thing for balance. This could mean very fast upgrades and map control.
As far as I know in ns1 you could build a hive with a gorge even when alien team was almost killed and with no hives on the map, but you couldn't stay on that situation too much longer. Can't remember how many seconds it was, but each X seconds you lost some life points. You could heal yourself as a gorge with the defense chamber and place another hive, but it was not and it will not be in the way you are telling.
@Argish. Totally forgot about losing health after all hives died.... Oh good times.... Hiding in a vent with regen and a DC waiting for 2 more res....
It's true. Ns1 games ended when all players were dead not all hives killed. Sometimes I wish it was that way in ns2. A lot of wasted time looking for the last guy hiding but some moments were just golden.
P.S. Are you my long lost brother?
And making the kham entirely dependent on gorges to do anything sounds like a better situation to you? I would love for gorges to have some kind of minicyst ability to place a cyst somewhere the kham can't, although that's starting to sound similar to contaminate, but the kham absolutely needs to be able to place cysts given the current building system.
Giving Gorges those types of responsibilities again will just require another type of rebalancing where whoever goes Gorge has to have a lot of res or some crap, cuz there's no way in hell I'll play in a team where half the team has to go gorge and spend tres to build upgrade structures and then have no res in time for late-game lifeforms.
That was my biggest gripe of NS1 because no one had res for Fade except 1-2 people...
o_o
maybe that will solve the Fade explosion....?
No. NO. Alien commander is h-here to stay...
.....o-ok?
Oh yes, that moments were magic. Also as a marine building a bunker in base when the round was lost, to suppress as many alien attacks as possible. Well we can still do that on ns2 apart from the stupid and awful option called ' concede '
Who had that idea? He should be fired !!!
I didn't catch you at first but then I look at your nickname and I must say I laughed.
my kham says no.
It simply will never work with the kham in place. The kham isnt going away, so nope.
I can't tell you the number of times I've had to sit by a disconnected harvester and heal it until the kham listens to me and recysts.
Allow gorges to place cysts would allow more strategic cysting, in a nutshell.
I'm also for the gorge being able to place shifts, crags, and shades (but not whips). Not sure if it would be pres drop, but it would allow for better support structure placement.
However, I don't think that gorges should be able to drop hives simply because of the potential for trolls and new players to waste tres dropping a hive in an unsafe location. The alternative to gorges dropping tres hives is worse; a pres hive drop would unbalance the game too much in terms of alien expansion.
Gorges dropping cysts to help patch a severed chain isn't a terrible idea actually, although detecting whether it's in a valid spot within range of another cyst might be wonky. Anything more than that does marginalize the khammander too much. It's a fast way to drain the already rather taxed gorge pres, too, so that's something to consider.
Now I'm all for gorge structures out of pres... Mini-shade and the like, small enough to fit in a vent but limited compared to full structures...
If your against building in cents then how about bringing back sticky chambers!
I think that pres would be the way to go as well. It would be hard to gather all the pres necessary for a full support structure, but the high price would prevent spam and make gorges think a little bit before barfing out structures everywhere.
Also, I'm completely against the idea of gorges being able to place whips. Blegh!
You could probably reduce the cost and only leave the effects supplied by the structures (Crags only heal, Shades only cloak, etc...). That way it doesn't impinge on the Khammander and reduces the cost for the structure.
It wouldn't be solely the gorge's ability to drop support structs. Khams would still have the ability to drop/manage full structures.
@MMZ_Torak I like the idea of the single purpose structs that only do the basic functions (no research, specials, etc) for gorges.